Feb 22, 2009

Twitter and Facebook along with Myspace are currently the three hottest social networking websites. Myspace had its first birthday way back in 2003, Facebook took to web in 2004 & Twitter originated in 2006. But since its origin the amount of buzz that Twitter has generated has sent shockwaves across the various media platforms.
What is Twitter? According to Wikipedia, Twitter is a social networking & micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Those who do not know how to use Twitter may have a look at these wonderful Twitter tips for beginners by PC Magazine & this Twitterspeak for twitter terminology.
Ever since its inception the growth of Twitter has been exemplary. 08-09 US Presidential Campaign, Mumbai terror attack & most recently (Feb 09) US Airways Flight 1549 accident generated the amount of buzz as never seen before. Actually such was the Twitter buzz that after the accident took place, #fight 1549 became a search term.
The number of celebrities joining Twitter per day is skyrocketing, latest in the series being famous Basketball star Shaquille O'Neal under the name The_Real_Shaq. On 12 February 2009, 202 cities around the world held Twestivals, bringing together the Twitter community for an evening party to raise money and awareness for Charity: Water & the result as on 18th Feb 09 - “total raised from the Global Twestival stands at USD 250,000 = 55 water projects in Ethiopia, Uganda and India - clean water for just over 17,000 people.”
According to Hitwise, Twitter has entered top 100 sites in UK, traffic has already trebled in 2009. Feb 2009 Complete.com blog,Twitter ranks as the third largest social network and puts the number of users at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visitors at 55 million. Just recently Twitter had its billionth tweet. Twitter is certainly on a role.
For more on twitter, stay tuned! Click to follow me on Twitter.

Yes Arvind. Agree with you. Facebook is a little complicated hence Indians use orkut instead but its much better. Twitter is a very useful tool, i saw its power during Mumbai Blasts. But sadly its yet to take off in India due to small following courtesy our low internet penetration.